The church Brorsons Kirke in Copenhagen had been shelter for a number of Iraqi refugees who were not accepeted by the Danish government. This week, the police removed these persons from the church to send them back to Iraq. This action made a number of Danes protest against it by blocking the streets through which the bus should transport the refugees away. What you see in the video is how the police brutally and violently tried to get the protesting people out of the way.
One thing is of course the law of asylum that says under which circumstances refugees would be accepted or not. And if we would assume that the Danish governement went by the books, there would be one or another reason why these refugees couldn’t be accepted. However, they searched asylum in that church, and there were people who cared and helped them, which is a good thing under any circumstances.
I am not a “believer”, I am just brought up in a society that calls itself a Christian society, and thus I am brought up with what you could call Christian values. But being grown up and having met people from all over the world, I have learned that those “Christian values” are basically the same as those values that probably any other religion in the world supports. And what happened here in Copenhagen this Thursday the 13 of August is an incredible proof of how badly the Danish government and its executive powers failed again in considering “Christian values”.
I really hope that this is going to change with the next election, and that the Danes will wake up and realise that they are going the wrong way here.
Recently, there has been starting a big buzz about La Roux, that English synth pop duo with that red haired singer and the dude squeezing the most early 80s sounds heard since 1982 out of his machines. Even though I don’t believe that the hype will last longer than this year’s summer, I must admit that they probably did this year’s chorus melody with their song Bulletproof.
Anyway, here is another example, apparently not signed to a major record company (yet), but within the same genre, and as well capable of sweet old-fashioned synth pop melodies: Watching Spaceships.
Troels Abrahamsen, whose tremendous album WHT I have praised elsewhere on this site, has recently submitted the vocal track of the song End Scene from that album for free download and encouraged people to remix him. The article in his blog is here.
This is not only very kind and generous, especially when considering the fact that he has released that track under a Creative Commons license, but also a great opportunity, because the song itself is a great tune. You can listen to the original version here. I found myself thinking over Troels’ sound and style quite a couple of times when making my own music, and here is my chance to contribute with a new angle to his work. That is amazing!
So, I did a remix. Sort of. It’s probably rather what you’d call bastard pop. I had this idea last night – right before I fell asleep, and tried it earlier this evening, and it seemed to work quite well. I took one of my own songs (Untitled 6, which I wrote in March/April 2008, being inspired by Portishead’s concert in KB Hallen), and put it together with Troels’ vocals. And this is what it turned out to be. If you like it, you are welcome to download the song and take it with you on your mp3 player and share it with your friends.